The story behind Rocket Jockey, and the 360 port you can’t play

Ars Technica has caught up with the mind behind the PC cult hit Rocket Jockey …

Sean Callahan wasn't expecting to be reading about a game he worked on when he was browsing Ars this week, but life has a way of sneaking up on you—especially when you're responsible for a cult hit on the PC. He e-mailed us and described his involvement in Rocket Jockey. "I came up with the quirky cable gameplay mechanic idea, designed the game, and wrote the physics engine it ran on, back what seems a lifetime ago now," he told Ars. "I didn't think anybody even knew that it existed anymore. Thanks for making my day!"

We couldn't let it end there, so we asked him to share some of his experiences and stories from making the game, from the team's hatred of the logo to the unofficial version of the game he plays on the Xbox 360 with his children.

Callahan said the ideas for the game came from a number of inspirations. "Using a grappling hook and cable to change direction came from one of the Batman movies where the Batmobile used something similar on a streetlight to turn a corner," he explained. "Having fast-moving flying vehicles where the rider was vulnerable came from the speeder bikes in Return of the Jedi." That movie also saw characters clotheslined off their rocket-shaped bikes. He was attracted to the idea of having the riders completely exposed rather than "encased" in a vehicle, making the action feel more personal.

One of the inspirations for Rocket Jockey

The game was prototyped in 1995 on a Macintosh system. The original plan was to release the game on the PlayStation, but "hardware limitations and longer lead times forced the switch to PC as the initial platform." Callahan worked alone until the fall of that year, and then Elliot Fan was hired as the art director, with Denis Fung as development lead. "The rest of the team was filled in over the following months, and by May of 1996 we were showing the game at E3. It finally shipped in October of 1996, with LAN support coming out early in 1997," Callahan said.

It's not surprising that features were left out of the first release: Callahan was working 24-hour days in the weeks leading up to launch, struggling to get the game finished. "By the end, I was so mentally immersed in running people down with rockets and so sleep deprived, that I had moments in a real car seeing real people in front of me, where instinct made me want to either hit the accelerator and steer towards them or veer away to line up a cable shot to take them down," he told Ars. "Luckily I was only a passenger at those moments and never behind the wheel."

Callahan refuses to take credit for the look or sound of the game. Elliot Fan designed the rockets and Chris Thompson came up with the funny rider names—such as Ace Ban Dage— and audio was provided by Tom Hays, who made the decision to go with surf music. He also provided the connections to get Dick Dale involved in the project. We used the game's logo for the first image of our Masterpiece article, but Callahan says everyone involved with the game hated the logo.

"The flaming skull and the tire tread-like pattern behind it had no relationship to the game and we thought it looked like bad tattoo art," he said, bringing up the time someone showed him a tattoo that looked almost exactly like the logo. "The marketing people created the logo and the head of studio approved it without our input. We added the helmet and goggles to the title screen image just to try to tie it to the game."

The game eventually shipped, and had a hard time for the reasons we described in the previous article. Callahan describes "testing" the multiplayer functionality while Rocket Science "circled the drain."

So where's the game now?

Sadly, unless you can track down an old packaged version of Rocket Jockey, there's no legal way to play. "As far as I know, it's never been legally available for download," he said. "The problem is the rights are in limbo with Rocket Science Games. Nobody can obtain the rights because no legal entity exists to license them."

Still, Callahan continues to work on the game. "Several years ago, I stripped all the Renderware dependencies out of the game and replaced them with Direct3D in order to get Rocket Jockey running again on PCs with modern 3D hardware," he told Ars. He still looks back with pride on both the single- and multiplayer aspects of the game. "Rocket Jockey is the last game I designed. I went back to software engineering and am currently a software architect in the Xbox group at Microsoft."

Well, he did work on at least one other gaming project, although we'll never get to enjoy it. He ported the game to the Xbox, and then the Xbox 360. "Since I don't have rights to the game, it's only playable in its current form by me and my kids."

I wish I had some happy ending for this story, but it remains hard to track down the original code, and there's little to no hope of a port coming out. There is still nothing like Rocket Jockey on modern consoles or the PC, and the love we've received in comments and e-mail since running the original story has been amazing. If nothing else, we know that the game has made an impact with fans, and learning more about how it was made has been fascinating.

"The love people have been giving the game has been amazing, especially after so many years," Callahan told us. "We always knew we had something cool, but figured that the circumstances of the company, the marketing, and the unconventional gameplay made it something that most people would never know about or play."

Nobody can obtain the rights because no legal entity exists to license them."

Wouldn't this mean no legal entity exists to sue him for just claiming the rights...?

Couldn't he just form a "trust" and split any profits between all the developers?

I was thinking the same thing, but, no doubt SOMEONE would step up and sue. They always do.

(Though, obviously, I say screw it and do it anyway.)

Also, I actually enjoyed the cover, for what that's worth. It fits well with the surf-rock style of the music, almost emoting a rockabilly sensibility. Is it like bad tattoo art? Yes. But that's part of the charm. (God, giving props to marketing? I feel dirty.)

Isn't there the option to use the same game play mechanics to create a game that plays the same but isn't rocket jockey? Heck if he has the code couldn't they basicly just come up with some new graphics and story and call it a new game? Seems like that sort of thing happens all the time.

With Microsoft's laywers and support and a good contract, I don't know why Xbox wouldn't push for the port (that is mostly already built). I mean, couldn't microsoft create an open licensing scheme, where they set aside a percentage of profits for whomever comes forward to claim licensing rights? I know it's not quite that simple, but there should be some legal way to resurrect abandoned IP's.

Ah, the joys of orphan works. Nobody knows who owns it, so somebody could pop up and sue anybody who tries to use it. So everybody avoids it....

I'm still not convinced that RJ is a true masterpiece, but it does sound like it would have been a fun game back in the day, and it's a genuine shame that (as with other classics such as System Shock), the IP is effectively lost in limbo!

With Microsoft's laywers and support and a good contract, I don't know why Xbox wouldn't push for the port (that is mostly already built). I mean, couldn't microsoft create an open licensing scheme, where they set aside a percentage of profits for whomever comes forward to claim licensing rights? I know it's not quite that simple, but there should be some legal way to resurrect abandoned IP's.

Often in cases of what would essentially be infringement, the suing party demands all profits, along with a fee on potential damage done to the brand, and often a fee is levied against the offender. The last thing Microsoft wants is to jump into a case where they're willingly opening themselves up to that. That'd just make everyone hate them even more.

Nobody can obtain the rights because no legal entity exists to license them."

Wouldn't this mean no legal entity exists to sue him for just claiming the rights...?

Couldn't he just form a "trust" and split any profits between all the developers?

Unfortunately, this is just the sort of situation that gets copyright lawyer's lips salivating. It's an easy payday for whomever happens to be sitting on the copyright, even if they've never showed any interest in attempting to do anything with it.

This is a great example of a MAJOR gap in IP laws as well as a MAJOR problem with 75 year and 100 year post mortem provisions.

It preserves the major successes, but sentences those works on the edges to the death penalty as even close family members may not realize the potential cultural value in preserving work. You also run into "Tragedy of the Anti-Commons" cases where because everyone who may own claim to a property wants to maximize their take, the property loses its value as interested buyers are put off.

Sooner or later an indie will redo this game as a spiritual successor and the original developers and owners will be out of luck.

For sake of cultural preservation, I think as soon as a corp goes out of business without someone buying it's IP, all IP should revert to Public Domain. Period. Or at least there should be a procedure for a court to declare the property in the hands of its actual creators.

I own a boxed copy of the game. Well, technically I only know exactly where the box is. The game is in a CD binder somewhere. When I needed to save space a few years back, I threw out all the boxes of every game I owned (which I now feel is sort of sacrilege, and regret ever doing) but I saved the Rocket Jockey box. Loved the logo. It's my favorite logo from a game. It's the only logo I stand a chance of drawing (crudely) from memory.

I even had a vinyl square bumper-sticker version of the logo that I got from somewhere. I had it lovingly affixed to my monster of an AT-motherboard "Server" PC case (from back in the "let's put in 20 fans for overclocking excellence!" days), and it really bummed me out to donate it to the group of college freshmen that served as a sort of "we'll take anything electronic" out-of-sight-out-of-mind/their-problem-now "electronics-recycling" outlet for my friends in years past.

An ironic/poetic balance-of-the-universe to the developers: Rocket Jockey seemed like a great game, but I just wasn't into Dick Dale enough to try and play it. Loved the logo, though.

Now let's just hope the IP rights holder is an Ars reader too. I would buy this game in a heartbeat on xbox live. This is one of my all time favorite games. You could jump in for 15-??? minutes and have a blast. It shipped on one of the cds to MaximumPC or was it still boot back then?So here is my plea, if you were an exec at rocket science, or know someone who was, convince them that this is an easy cash grab, that would bring a lot of joy to a bunch of people. If the code is already there, it seems like the cost would be limited to a few hours/day or lawyering to settle on a contract and an xbox developer account. Please, please, please.

For sake of cultural preservation, I think as soon as a corp goes out of business without someone buying it's IP, all IP should revert to Public Domain. Period. Or at least there should be a procedure for a court to declare the property in the hands of its actual creators.

I always thought that copyright really just needed a 'use-it-or-lose-it' stipulation like trade marks have. That way, if you want to use or distribute an orphan work and someone steps up to sue you, the onus is on them to prove that they've actually been doing something with it prior to crawling out from under their rock for a court appearance.

It's a problem with Copyright that this can happen: when a work is orphaned, it can be impossible to find the owner. I think orphaned works should enter the public domain much more quickly, and that Copyright holders should be required to put in at least a minimal effort to assert their Copyright for substantial works.

I've long believed that Copyright needs to be extended in two ways:1. Copyright should not be "free." Any work that has a substantial commercial value and is not subject to compulsory licensing should be required to be registered with the Library of Congress. A copyright registration number should be included in all registered works, allowing an individual to track down the Copyright holder for licensing purposes. All of an entity's works would be tied to one contact record, so an entity would only need to update its address one time after a move, not once for every registered work.

2. If a Copyright holder doesn't live up to their obligation to keep their information updated, and a potential licencee can show that a good faith attempt to contact the registered owner of the Copyright has failed, and if the contact information is more than 2 years old, then the item should be classified as Orphaned. An Orphaned work may be exploited with no Copyright implications. If the owner later comes forward and claims the work, he will not be able to sue for infringement.

So essentially, it would require people to at least keep the Library of Congress updated with current contact information. Even updating a registration record once a year would be enough to keep a work protected, and it would also allow orphaned works to enter the public domain much more quickly.

Simply put, I don't think Copyright was ever intended to protect abandoned works, and Copyright law should be amended to clarify the status for abandoned works and establish a process to prove a work has been abandoned. Providing a clear policy and contact information for all Copyrighted works would go a long way to solving the problem of abandoned and orphaned works.

"Nobody can obtain the rights because no legal entity exists to license them."

If this isn't a prime example of an orphaned work, I don't know what is. (An author without a family who dies without a will I guess...)

That's an interesting one... when a person dies without a will or heirs, their property goes to the state. I believe the items are auctioned, and the proceeds go to the state's general fund. I don't think Copyright ownership should apply here, since Copyright was intended to promote creation of artistic works... if the creator is dead, and his heirs are dead, there is no societal benefit to continuing to charge money to license that work.

Ah, the joys of orphan works. Nobody knows who owns it, so somebody could pop up and sue anybody who tries to use it. So everybody avoids it....

I'm still not convinced that RJ is a true masterpiece, but it does sound like it would have been a fun game back in the day, and it's a genuine shame that (as with other classics such as System Shock), the IP is effectively lost in limbo!

Granted there wasn't much of a plot, so yes, it wasn't a true masterpiece.

However, it was one of the more fun games I've played, in a cruel violence sort of way.

Imagine GTA, Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, and Carmageddon all crossed together. If you don't know what Carmageddon is, then go play it.

The racing game is your usually racing game, but to turn corners you usually had to grappling hook poles, which required careful timing. You also had the option, if you were too far behind, to instead aim to maim and disable all the other racers, thereby being able to finish the race uncontested. I mostly settled for a combination of both.

The battle game was somewhat like Harry Potter Quidditch (this was before the books were released). There was a large ball with goals on each end. You grappling hooked the ball, and rocked your rocket left/right to get it going in a circle, then released your hook and the ball flew into the goal. You could also use the ball as a projectile, or if you were really evil, and I had a lot of fun with that, grappling hook another person and tether them to the ball (the tether would eventually break).

So, if you enjoyed frying ants when you were a kid, this game is definitely for you.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the copyright expiration on computer software/games 10 years? If so, then if Rocket Science has been shuttered for the past decade (meaning 2001 or earlier), and they took the licensing rights for Rocket Jockey "to the grave with them", doesn't it technically mean that it would become available? Case in point, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, which whoever currently represents the former Westwood Studios recently put up on the official site as a free download (albiet with the only change made from the original source code being Vista/7 compatibility). If this is the case, they could do what C&C did, or Microsoft could put out sort of an "open call" for anyone who legitimately owns the rights, if they are still valid, to work out a licensing agreement, or even an outright sale of license.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the copyright expiration on computer software/games 10 years? If so, then if Rocket Science has been shuttered for the past decade (meaning 2001 or earlier), and they took the licensing rights for Rocket Jockey "to the grave with them", doesn't it technically mean that it would become available? Case in point, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, which whoever currently represents the former Westwood Studios recently put up on the official site as a free download (albiet with the only change made from the original source code being Vista/7 compatibility). If this is the case, they could do what C&C did, or Microsoft could put out sort of an "open call" for anyone who legitimately owns the rights, if they are still valid, to work out a licensing agreement, or even an outright sale of license.

IANAL, but I know of no exemption from the general provision of copyright in the US.

Ah, the joys of orphan works. Nobody knows who owns it, so somebody could pop up and sue anybody who tries to use it. So everybody avoids it....

I'm still not convinced that RJ is a true masterpiece, but it does sound like it would have been a fun game back in the day, and it's a genuine shame that (as with other classics such as System Shock), the IP is effectively lost in limbo!

Granted there wasn't much of a plot, so yes, it wasn't a true masterpiece.

However, it was one of the more fun games I've played, in a cruel violence sort of way.

Imagine GTA, Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, and Carmageddon all crossed together. If you don't know what Carmageddon is, then go play it.

The racing game is your usually racing game, but to turn corners you usually had to grappling hook poles, which required careful timing. You also had the option, if you were too far behind, to instead aim to maim and disable all the other racers, thereby being able to finish the race uncontested. I mostly settled for a combination of both.

The battle game was somewhat like Harry Potter Quidditch (this was before the books were released). There was a large ball with goals on each end. You grappling hooked the ball, and rocked your rocket left/right to get it going in a circle, then released your hook and the ball flew into the goal. You could also use the ball as a projectile, or if you were really evil, and I had a lot of fun with that, grappling hook another person and tether them to the ball (the tether would eventually break).

So, if you enjoyed frying ants when you were a kid, this game is definitely for you.

Major fan of the game here, and I do think it is a true masterpiece. Consider for a moment that this game pre-dates all the games you mentioned. In addition the gameplay was just incredibly solid for so many pioneering concepts. I actually got *better* at the game to the point that I can do things you couldn't have imagined doing when you played the first few levels. People who beat the last level know exactly what I mean (at that point I was like WOW they really expect me to be *that* good at this game...RLY?...and yet I was).

Consider for a moment that there are so many sport games out there that are complete drivel and barely playable in controls for things that amount to nothing more than 2d soccer. And here we have a 3d game with very playable controls and game mechanics where you are tossing players and balls around into goals with grappling hooks, etc. It sounds like it'd be an uncontrollable mess when most games can't even get football right, but it absolutely wasn't, and by the end of the game you will be racing, tossing players, bombs, and game balls around like a true pro of a sport that doesn't even exist. Most of the time in sports games you position your player, hope your opponents are in poor positions, and then press a button and hope to make a success 'roll' of some sort to score a point...and its an utterly terrible game mechanic that somehow persists the genre. In RJ if you got better at the game, its simply because you got a whole lot better at the core gameplay mechanics of racing and grappling, etc. Not so much that you predict enemy behavior, or that if you shoot the ball from this location you'll most likely score, etc.

Comparing this game to racing and sports game it absolutely is a masterpiece of those genres especially for the time because lets face it, those genres are typically bottom of the barrel to PC gaming fans. I am *not* a fan of racing games and *hate* sports games as well...but the gameplay in RJ is so solid and fun it is on my short list of favorites.

X-wing would be a series I remember that pre-dates it that also has solid gameplay and far more polish, but its also riding a bit on established and hugely popular IP and isn't really pioneering new gameplay concepts...just evolving it with major flair. And of course there is X-com.

BTW just tried out Hammerfight on the latest humble bundle, and no offense to the indie developers involved but it comes after RJ for more than a DECADE, and IMO falls short of it in many areas. Where indie physics games are all the rage now, RJ pre-dates all of them, was 3d, and was still incredibly playable with fun dynamic and chaotic gameplay mechanics much in the same way 2d physic games are all the rage now.

As already mentioned, I don't see why he/MS can't just re-build the gameplay from scratch and not use the old name. After all, that name has nearly zero mind-share, even the title of the masterpiece article acknowledged that.

If no game could ever play the same we wouldn't have more than one FPS, or dungeon crawler, or racer, or any other genre that's been done to death.

Just make the same game and call it Rocket Rash or something. Speaking of which we could use a Road Rash reboot -- games were never quite completely right, but it was fun to knock someone of a motorcycle with a pipe...i'm guessing this game left one with similar satisfaction.

Speaking of which we could use a Road Rash reboot -- games were never quite completely right, but it was fun to knock someone of a motorcycle with a pipe...i'm guessing this game left one with similar satisfaction.

Except we aren't talking about sprites hitting each other. Your bone-crushing feats are more akin to the carnal pleasures of stair dismount, except its actually a rocket dismount at 100 mph with an actual game context behind it. It is actually interesting to realize how rather recent popular game mechanics (i.e. ragdoll-like damage) was actually done in this game (it might have been far more simplistic and not true ragdoll physics but it still felt quite good when playing, and you definitely could tell when by the laws of physics, how things aren't going to end well for you or your enemies). The fact that it isn't true ragdoll physics (which probably would have been too demanding for the time), is more than made up for the fact that you are truly being ragdolled or ragdolling opponents, if that makes any sense.

Granted there wasn't much of a plot, so yes, it wasn't a true masterpiece.

Too many games have irrelevant plots/stories. If the game's premise is simple, the plot/story usually should be kept simple or even nonexistant. I'd hate to see a GTA4 or Mass Effect level of plot/story laid on top of a simple combat racer.

As such, I find it hard to agree with your statement. Is Super Mario Brothers anything less than a masterpiece* because it's plot is so simple? What is a masterpiece anyway? Some people think Jackson Pollock produced masterpieces of art. I think he produced large canvasses that looked like a 3 yr old had a tantrum in the local Sherwin-Williams.

Ah, the joys of orphan works. Nobody knows who owns it, so somebody could pop up and sue anybody who tries to use it. So everybody avoids it....

I'm still not convinced that RJ is a true masterpiece, but it does sound like it would have been a fun game back in the day, and it's a genuine shame that (as with other classics such as System Shock), the IP is effectively lost in limbo!

Granted there wasn't much of a plot, so yes, it wasn't a true masterpiece.

However, it was one of the more fun games I've played, in a cruel violence sort of way.

Imagine GTA, Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, and Carmageddon all crossed together. If you don't know what Carmageddon is, then go play it.

I played Carmageddon back in the day And Destruction Derby. And Road Rash. And Joust. And 3D Deathchase, back in the 1980s on the humble 16k Spectrum. Hey hey, 16k...

To be honest, I can't really say much about Rocket Jockey because I haven't played it - and even if the XBLA port was approved tomorrow, it'd be difficult to appreciate it in the same way as I would have done 15 years ago.

But even so, given the time at which it was released (November 1996, according to Mobygames) it sounds a bit too focused on a single gameplay mechanic to be a genuine masterpiece. To put it in context: this is the the same year when on the PC alone, games such as Quake, GTA, C&C: Red Alert (and Warcraft II), Duke Nukem 3D, X-Wing, Syndicate Wars, Tomb Raider, and Wing Commander IV were all released: these were all genuine masterpieces that either perfected existing gameplay principles or experimented with new and interesting concepts, from sandbox gameplay to realistic physic models, AI modelling (especially in the RTS games), exploration of true-3D worlds and the integration of multimedia elements (video, voice actors, etc).

Admittedly, there's something to be said for doing one thing and doing it well - but given the competition and the relatively lackluster reviews at the time (it scored an average of around 70%, according to Mobygames), it really does feel like this choice was driven more by personal nostalgia than anything else.

(not that I'm immune to such things; if I had my druthers - whatever they are - I'd put the original MDK into the Masterpiece list in a heartbeat. However, I'd quite happily defend it's classification against all and sundry: the graphics were amazing, the physics and AI were good, the gameplay was impressively varied and it still looks surprisingly good today; the D3D patch still works under Win7/DX11, though I personally use a 3DFX wrapper, as it's more compatible with FRAPs and I've been trying to put together a full run-through of the game and it's various secrets, in-jokes and set-pieces for Youtube. But I digress...)

Granted there wasn't much of a plot, so yes, it wasn't a true masterpiece.

Too many games have irrelevant plots/stories. If the game's premise is simple, the plot/story usually should be kept simple or even nonexistant. I'd hate to see a GTA4 or Mass Effect level of plot/story laid on top of a simple combat racer.

Fully agreed - Tetris doesn't have a plot and that's a masterpiece by anyone's standards. And as for R-Type, the plot consisted of a single phrase: "Blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire!". S'hardly an oscar-winning script...